argumentative essay the strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde

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Analysis of Jekyll and Hyde Duality in Stevenson's Novel

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• Edley, N., & Wetherell, M. (2001). Jekyll and Hyde: Men's constructions of feminism and feminists. Feminism & Psychology, 11(4), 439-457. (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0959353501011004002)
• Doane, J., & Hodges, D. (1989, October). Demonic Disturbances of Sexual Identity: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr/s Hyde. In NOVEL: a Forum on Fiction (Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 63-74). Duke University Press.(https://www.jstor.org/stable/1345579)
• Rose, B. A. (1996). Jekyll and Hyde Adapted: Dramatizations of Cultural Anxiety (No. 66). Greenwood Publishing Group. (https://www.worldcat.org/title/jekyll-and-hyde-adapted-dramatizations-of-cultural-anxiety/oclc/32921958)
• Becchio, C., Sartori, L., Bulgheroni, M., & Castiello, U. (2008). The case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: a kinematic study on social intention. Consciousness and cognition, 17(3), 557-564. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810007000207)
• Lacey, N. (2010). Psychologising Jekyll, demonising Hyde: The strange case of criminal responsibility. Criminal Law and Philosophy, 4, 109-133. (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11572-010-9091-8)

Should follow an “upside down” triangle format, meaning, the writer should start off broad and introduce the text and author or topic being discussed, and then get more specific to the thesis statement.

Cornerstone of the essay, presenting the central argument that will be elaborated upon and supported with evidence and analysis throughout the rest of the paper.

The topic sentence serves as the main point or focus of a paragraph in an essay, summarizing the key idea that will be discussed in that paragraph.

The body of each paragraph builds an argument in support of the topic sentence, citing information from sources as evidence.

After each piece of evidence is provided, the author should explain HOW and WHY the evidence supports the claim.

Should follow a right side up triangle format, meaning, specifics should be mentioned first such as restating the thesis, and then get more broad about the topic at hand. Lastly, leave the reader with something to think about and ponder once they are done reading.

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Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › British Literature › Analysis of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Analysis of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on October 7, 2022

Longman, Green, and Company published Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1886 as a “shilling shocker.” Stevenson reputedly developed the storyline from a dream he had about a man forced into a cabinet after ingesting a potion that would convert him into a brutal monster. The composition of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde began in September 1885, and the final draft was submitted for publication later that same year. Unlike most 19th century literary works, Stevenson’s manuscript was released in book form instead of being serialized in a popular magazine. The publishers withheld its release until January 1886 because booksellers had already placed their Christmas stock. Within six months, Stevenson’s novella sold more than 40,000 copies in England and America.

Dr. Jekyll (right) and Mr. Hyde, both as portrayed by Fredric March in Rouben Mamoulian’s film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931).

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde debates the conflict between good and evil and the correlation among bourgeois values, urban violence, and class structure. Dr. Jekyll is a seemingly placid character whose often-debated scientific research has nonetheless gained him respect amid his peers. The potion that Jekyll develops causes an unexplainable transformation into the violent Mr. Hyde. The Mr. Hyde alter-ego may represent an uncontrollable subconscious desire driven by anger and frustration toward an oppressive English class structure. Hyde’s numerous rampages include trampling a young girl and murdering the prominent English politician Sir Danvers. Although Jekyll prefers living the life of “the elderly and discontent doctor” (84), he cannot control his urge for “the liberty, the comparative youth, the light steps, leaping impulses, and secret pleasures” that the Hyde persona offers him. Dr. Jekyll’s desired liberty is perhaps caused by the restricted lifestyle that bourgeois cultural codes imposed on English society. Several Victorian social critics maintained that inner-city London dwellers were a debased life form living in junglelike conditions analogous to those in Africa. In 1890, William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, claimed that England needed rescuing from its continually degenerating condition since its citizens were gradually turning into “[a] population trodden with drink, steeped in vice, [and] eaten up by every social and physical malady” (quoted in Stevenson, 183). Stevenson’s text describes how hidden desires have always existed in a seemingly perverted civilization.

Literary critics have stressed that Stevenson’s success in the “shilling shocker” market both helped and hindered his career. The rapid success of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde led Henry James to remark that Stevenson’s novella was at first too popular a work to be comfortably called a masterpiece. Henry James was not questioning Stevenson’s talent as a writer but rather was noting that the book’s quick popularity defined it as a story that was easily accessible to the mass public.

Playwright Richard Mansfield produced a stage version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1888. Shortly after Mansfield’s play opened, several East End London prostitutes were murdered by a serial killer nicknamed Jack the Ripper. English newspapers initially termed the slayer the “Whitechapel murderer” and “Leather Apron” before settling on “Jack the Ripper.” Reporters based their stories on the possible correlation between the killings and Mansfield’s theatrical representation of violence. Mansfield’s play was eventually closed because such parallels made it seem as though Jack the Ripper was mimicking the violence depicted in Mansfield’s play, marking the first time that the concept of Mr. Hyde was used in reference to sequential crime sprees. Reports from the Daily Telegraph further damaged the profits for Mansfield’s play by stating that “there is no taste for horror” (17) on the London stage. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde remains a significant canonical text that uses its patchwork narrative to explore the conflation of reality and fictional representation that most postmodern writers still examine.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Caler, Jenni. The Robert Louis Stevenson Companion. Edinburgh: P. Harris, 1980. James, Henry. “Robert Louis Stevenson.” Reprinted in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, edited by Martin A. Danahay, 140–141. Orchard Park, N.Y.: Broadview Literary Texts, 1999. Rose, Brian A. Jekyll and Hyde Adapted: Dramatizations of Cultural Anxiety. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1996. Saposnik, Irving S. “The Anatomy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” In The Definitive Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Companion, edited by Harry M. Geduld, 108–117. New York: Garland Publishing, 1983. Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Edited by Martin A. Danahay, 29–91. Orchard Park, N.Y.: Broadview Literary Texts, 1999.

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Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: Full Analysis and Themes

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The story for Jekyll and Hyde famously came to Robert Louis Stevenson in a dream, and according to Stevenson’s stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, Stevenson wrote the first draft of the novella in just three days, before promptly throwing it onto the fire when his wife criticised it. Stevenson then rewrote it from scratch, taking ten days this time, and the novella was promptly published in January 1886.

The story is part detective-story or mystery, part Gothic horror, and part science fiction, so it’s worth analysing how Stevenson fuses these different elements.

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: analysis

Now it’s time for some words of analysis about Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic 1886 novella. However, perhaps ‘analyses’ (plural) would be more accurate, since there never could be one monolithic meaning of a story so ripe with allegory and suggestive symbolism.

Like another novella that was near-contemporary with Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde , and possibly influenced by it ( H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine ), the symbols often point in several different directions at once.

Any attempt to reduce Stevenson’s story of doubling to a moral fable about drugs or drink, or a tale about homosexuality, is destined to lose sight of the very thing which makes the novella so relevant to so many people: its multifaceted quality. So here are some (and they are only some) of the many interpretations of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde which have been put forward in the last 120 years or so.

A psychoanalytic or proto-psychoanalytic analysis

In this interpretation, Jekyll is the ego and Hyde the id (in Freud’s later terminology). The ego is the self in Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, while the id is the set of primal drives found in our unconscious: the urge to kill, or do inappropriate sexual things, for instance.

Several of Robert Louis Stevenson’s essays, such as ‘A Chapter on Dreams’ (1888), prefigure some of Freud’s later ideas; and there was increasing interest in the workings of the human mind towards the end of the nineteenth century (two leading journals in the field, Brain and Mind , had both been founded in the 1870s).

The psychoanalytic interpretation is a popular one with many readers of Jekyll and Hyde , and since the novella is clearly about repression of some sort, one can make a psychoanalytic interpretation – an analysis grounded in psychoanalysis, if you like – quite convincingly.

It might be significant, reading the story from a post-Freudian perspective, that Hyde is described as childlike at several points: does he embody Jekyll’s – and, indeed, man’s – deep desire to return to a time before responsibility and full maturity, when one was freer to act on impulse? Early infancy is the formative period for much Freudian psychoanalysis.

Recall the empty middle-class scenes at the beginning of the book: Utterson and Enfield on their joyless Sunday walks, for instance. Hyde attacks father-figures (Sir Danvers Carew, the MP whom he murders, is a white-haired old gentleman), which would fall in line with Freud’s concept of the Oedipus complex and Jekyll’s desire to return to a time before adult life with its responsibilities and disappointments.

However, one fly in the Oedipal ointment is that Hyde also attacks a young girl – almost the complete opposite of the ‘old man’ or father figure embodied by Danvers Carew.

Nevertheless, psychoanalytic readings of the novella have been popular for some time, and it’s worth remembering that the idea for the book came to Stevenson in a dream. Observe, also, the presence of dreams and dreamlike scenes in the novel itself, such as when Jekyll remarks that he ‘received Lanyon’s condemnation partly in a dream; it was partly in a dream that I came home to my own house and got into bed’.

An anti-alcohol morality tale?

Alternatively, a different interpretation: we might analyse these dreamlike aspects of the novel in another way and see the novel as being about alcoholism and temperance , subjects which were being fiercely debated at the time Stevenson was writing.

Here, then, the ‘transforming draught’ which Jekyll concocts represents alcohol, and Jekyll, upon imbibing the draught, becomes a violent, unpredictable person unknown even to himself. (This reading has been most thoroughly explored in Thomas L. Reed’s 2006 study The Transforming Draught .)

Note how often wine crops up in this short book: it turns up first of all in the second sentence of the novella, when Utterson is found sipping it, and Hyde, we learn, has a closet ‘filled with wine’. Might the continual presence of wine be a clue that we are all Hydes waiting to happen? Note how the opening paragraph informs us that Utterson drinks gin when he is alone.

This thesis – that the novella is about alcohol and temperance – is intriguing, but has been contested by critics such as Julia Reid for being too speculative and reductionist: see her review of The Transforming Draught in The Review of English Studies , 2007.

The ‘drugs’ interpretation

Similarly, the idea that the ‘draught’ is a metaphor for some other drug, whether opium or cocaine . Scholars are unsure as to whether Stevenson was on drugs when he wrote the book: some accounts say Stevenson used cocaine to finish the manuscript; others say he took ergot, which is the substance from which LSD was later synthesised. Some say he was too sick to be taking anything.

You could purchase cocaine and opium from your local chemist in 1880s London (indeed, another invention of 1886, Coca-Cola, originally contained cocaine, as the drink’s name still testifies: don’t worry, it doesn’t any more).

This is essentially a development of the previous interpretation concerning alcohol, and arguably has similar limitations in being too restrictive an interpretation. However, note the way that Jekyll, in his ‘full statement’ becomes reliant on the ‘draught’ or ‘salt’ towards the end.

A religious analysis

As such, the story has immediate links with the story Stevenson would write sixty years later. Stevenson was an atheist who managed to escape the constrictive religion of his parents, but he remained haunted by Calvinistic doctrines for the rest of his life, and much of his work can be seen as an attempt to grapple with these issues which had affected and afflicted him so much as a child.

The sexuality interpretation

Some critics have interpreted Jekyll and Hyde in light of late nineteenth-century attitudes to sexuality : note the almost total absence of women from the story, barring the odd maid and ‘old hag’, and that hapless girl trampled underfoot by Hyde.

Some critics have suggested that the idea of blackmail for homosexual acts lurks behind the story, and the novella itself mentions this when Enfield tells Utterson that he refers to the house of Mr Hyde as ‘Black Mail House’ as a consequence of the girl-trampling scene in the street.

As such, the novella becomes an allegory for the double life lived by many homosexual Victorian men, who had to hide (or Hyde ) their illicit liaisons from their friends and families. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote to his friend Robert Bridges that the girl-trampling incident early on in the narrative was ‘perhaps a convention: he was thinking of something unsuitable for fiction’.

Some have interpreted this statement – by Hopkins, himself a repressed homosexual – as a reference to homosexual activity in late Victorian London.

Consider in this connection the fact that Hyde enters Jekyll’s house through the ‘back way’ – even, at one point ‘the back passage’. 1885, the year Stevenson wrote the book, was the year of the Criminal Law Amendment Act (commonly known as the Labouchere Amendment ), which criminalised acts of ‘gross indecency’ between men (this was the act which, ten years later, would put Oscar Wilde in gaol).

However, we should be wary of reading the text as about ‘homosexual panic’, since, as Harry Cocks points out, homosexuality was frequently ‘named openly, publicly and repeatedly’ in nineteenth-century criminal courts. But then could fiction for a mass audience as readily name such things?

A Darwinian analysis

Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species , which laid out the theory of evolution by natural selection, had been published in 1859, when Stevenson was still a child. In this reading, Hyde represents the primal, animal origin of modern, civilised man.

Consider here the repeated uses of the word ‘apelike’ in relation to Hyde, suggesting he is an atavistic throwback to an earlier, more primitive species of man than Homo sapiens . This reading incorporates theories of something called ‘devolution’, an idea (now discredited) which suggested that life forms could actually evolve backwards into more primitive forms.

This is also linked with late Victorian fears concerning degeneration and decadence among the human race. Is Jekyll’s statement that he ‘bore the stamp, of lower elements in my soul’ an allusion to Charles Darwin’s famous phrase from the end of The Descent of Man (1871), ‘man […] bears […] the indelible stamp of his lowly origin’?

In his story ‘Olalla’, another tale of the double which Stevenson published in 1885, he writes: ‘Man has risen; if he has sprung from the brutes he can descend to the same level again’.

This Darwinian analysis of Jekyll and Hyde could incorporate elements of the sexual which the previous interpretation also touches upon, but would view the novel as a portrayal of man’s – and we mean specifically man ’s here – repression of the darker, violent, primitive side of his nature associated with rape, pillage, conquest, and murder.

This looks back to a psychoanalytic reading, with the ‘id’ being the home of primal sexual desire and lust. The girl-tramping scene may take on another significance here: it’s a ‘girl’ rather than a boy because it symbolises Hyde’s animalistic desire to conquer and brutalise someone of the opposite, not the same, sex.

There have been many critical readings of the novella in relation to sex and sexuality, but it’s important to point out that Stevenson denied that the novella was about sexuality (see below).

A study in hypocrisy?

Or perhaps not: perhaps there is something in the idea that hypocrisy is the novella’s theme , as Stevenson himself suggested in a letter of November 1887 to John Paul Bocock, editor of the New York Sun : ‘The harm was in Jekyll,’ Stevenson wrote, ‘because he was a hypocrite – not because he was fond of women; he says so himself; but people are so filled full of folly and inverted lust, that they can think of nothing but sexuality. The Hypocrite let out the beast’.

This analysis of Jekyll and Hyde sees the two sides to Jekyll’s personality as a portrayal of the dualistic nature of Victorian society, where you must be respectable and civilised on the outside, while all the time harbouring an inward lust, violence, and desire which you have to bring under control.

This was a popular theme for many late nineteenth-century writers – witness not only Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray but also the double lives of Jack and Algernon in Wilde’s comedy of manners, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). This is a more open-ended interpretation, and the novella does appear to be about repression of some sort.

In this respect, this interpretation is similar to the psychoanalytic reading proposed above, but it also tallies with Stevenson’s own assertion that the story is about hypocrisy. Everyone in this book is masking their private thoughts or desires from others.

Note how even the police officer, Inspector Newcomen, when he learns of the murder of the MP, goes from being horrified one moment to excited the next, as ‘the next moment his eye lighted up with professional ambition’. He can barely contain his glee. The maid who answers the door at Hyde’s rooms has ‘an evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy; but her manners were excellent’.

From these clues, we can also posit a reading of the novel which sees it as about the class structure of late nineteenth-century Britain, where Jekyll represents the comfortable middle class and Hyde is the repressed – or, indeed, oppressed – working-class figure.

Note here, however, how Hyde is repeatedly described as a ‘gentleman’ by those who see him, and that he attacks Danvers Carew with a ‘cane’, rather than, say, a club (though it is reported, tellingly, that he ‘clubbed’ Carew to death with it).

A scientific interpretation

The reference to the evil maid with excellent manners places Jekyll’s own duality at the extreme end of a continuum, where everyone is putting on a respectable and acceptable mask which hides or conceals the evil truth lurking behind it. So we might see Jekyll’s scientific experiment as merely a physical embodiment of what everyone does.

This leads some critics to ask, then, whether the novella about the misuse of science . Or is the ‘tincture’ merely a scientific, chemical composition because a magical draught or elixir would be unbelievable to an 1880s reader? Arthur Machen, an author who was much influenced by Stevenson and especially by Jekyll and Hyde , made this point in a letter of 1894, when he grumbled:

In these days the supernatural per se is entirely incredible; to believe, we must link our wonders to some scientific or pseudo-scientific fact, or basis, or method. Thus we do not believe in ‘ghosts’ but in telepathy, not in ‘witch-craft’ but in hypnotism. If Mr Stevenson had written his great masterpiece about 1590-1650, Dr Jekyll would have made a compact with the devil. In 1886 Dr Jekyll sends to the Bond Street chemists for some rare drugs.

This is worth pondering: the use of the ‘draught’ lends the story an air of scientific authenticity, which makes the story a form of science fiction rather than fantasy: the tincture which Jekyll drinks is not magical, merely a chemical potion of some vaguely defined sort. But to say that the story is actually about the dangers of misusing science could be a leap too far.

We run the risk of confusing the numerous film adaptations of the book with the book itself: we immediately picture wild-haired soot-faced scientists causing explosions and mixing up potions in a dark laboratory, but in fact this is not really what the story is about , merely the means through which the real meat of the story – the transformation of Jekyll into Hyde – is effected.

It’s only once this split has been achieved that the real story, about the dark side of man’s nature which he represses, comes to light. (Compare Frankenstein here .)

All of these interpretations of Jekyll and Hyde can be – and have been – proposed, but it’s worth bearing in mind that the popularity of Stevenson’s tale may lie in the very polyvalent and ambiguous nature of the text, the fact that it exists as a symbol without a key, a riddle without a definitive answer.

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Dualism in “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” Essay

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Introduction

The novella “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” revolves around a London based lawyer named Gabriel John Utterson. In the film, Gabriel investigates the strange deeds that take place between Dr. Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde. He does this in order to discover the truth about the relationship between the two individuals.

Dr. Jekyll suffers from a rare mental condition referred to as the split personality or dissociative identity disorder. He has two traits or personalities. One of them is good, while the other is very evil. The wicked side is represented by Hyde. The doctor is successful and has a brilliant mind. He is highly respected in the community where he lives. Jekyll does his best to keep his dark character under control. The reason behind this is to maintain his good reputation in the society and avoid being permanently evil.

In this paper, the author will critically analyze and discuss the nature of Jekyll and Hyde’s case. A critical review of the novella reveals that “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” has both criminal and medical elements. To this end, the two phenomena are interrelated. As such, the medical elements give rise to the criminal aspects and vice versa. A number of examples from the primary source are used to support this argument.

Analyzing the Criminal and Medical Aspects of “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”

With the help of the two characters portrayed by the doctor, the writer of the novella brings out the element of duality. Jekyll reflects on the profound deception of life and the dualist nature of man. He comes to the conclusion that all individuals have more than one personality.

He believes that man is not truly one, but two. As a result, his convictions drive him to split his traits into two separate identities. In the long run, the move creates a major conflict. The film centers on the self-righteous and unwavering Doctor Jekyll and the evil Mr. Hyde. The shift between the two personas is cleverly done. As a result, it is hard for the observer to realize that Jekyll and Hyde could be the same person.

As already indicated, “The Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde” is both criminal and medical. The highly respected doctor commits a number of evil deeds, which are influenced and aided by his medical background. The medical aspect comes into play when he produces a portion of himself in the course of experiments to free himself of the evil personality. His activities give rise to Edward Hyde. The new person is very wicked and amoral. In addition to being evil, Hyde’s body is different.

It appears as if he is suffering from a medical condition. The body is ugly and deformed. It is also pale and dwarfish (Leslie, p. 41). In addition, he has a kind of black sneering coolness. The expression makes him look like Satan. Jekyll believes both personas can receive the pleasure they yearn for without the demands conflicting with each other. However, things turn out differently.

The dark half gradually becomes more powerful than the good side. The development forces Jekyll to commit criminal acts, which lead to his destruction. In this instance, it appears that the medical aspects of his appearance predispose him to criminal acts.

The medical experiments conducted by the man bring out two entirely different and independent entities. Jekyll considers Hyde as a natural second form that substituted his original self. The new form bears the stamp of lower elements associated with his soul. However, he does not embody the good virtues he possesses the same way Hyde exemplifies evil.

By splitting his personalities, he only succeeds in dealing with the wicked side and leaves his original self in the same mixed state as it was before. Jekyll fails to liberate himself from the dark side he unleashes through his medical experiments. The desire to take the portion was influenced by wicked urges, such as ambition and pride. To justify the existence of the evil side, he blames his state of mind at the time of taking the portion. However, this cannot be used as an excuse. It only shows that Jekyll is entirely evil.

If he was a good and moral man, it would have been hard for the dark side to take over his personality. The doctor would have been able to control the persona he created preventing, it from becoming powerful. On its part, drinking the portion may have led to the rise of a beatific creature. It gave rise to a being that participated in charity activities aimed at helping the society and not causing harm to the innocent people. Mr. Hyde’s personality was just lying deep within him.

It was waiting for the opportunity to be unleashed. As time goes by, Jekyll gets in touch more with the evil form than with the original one. As a result, only Hyde exists at the end of the novella. He is depicted in the film as a primitive creature. The reason is because he is a strong force that can no longer be controlled by anyone, not even himself. Hyde represents the true criminal nature of Jekyll, which had been repressed for a very long time. The instinctual side of man is very strong and should be unleashed with caution.

The transformation of Jekyll into Hyde acts as a cover for committing criminal activities. What this means is that the case has some elements of crime to it. If the case was entirely medical, he would have created another portion to counter the evil side that emerged. The frequent shifts in persona are indications of the fact that he is comfortable with the evil character of Mr. Hyde.

He strikes out on any person who witnesses his deformed nature. Much of his past is unearthed in the film. For example, he has never been photographed before. In addition, the master of the servant maid had only seen him twice. Furthermore, his family cannot be traced. Hyde operates very safely to ensure the identity remains under cover. As time goes by, he becomes more violent and Jekyll no longer needs to use the portion to unleash the demon.

The violent nature of Mr. Edward Hyde causes him to attack and murder Sir Danvers Carew. He committed the dreadful act without a clear reason. The action made him a wanted outlaw in England. In addition, Hyde had also trampled on a girl she had met accidentally. The incident involving the young girl aged between eight and ten years was witnessed by Richard Enfield. He was a distant relative of Lawyer Gabriel Utterson. It took place at about 3 o’clock on one winter morning.

Hyde was walking eastward when he bumped to an innocent child on the side street. Due to the collision, the girl fell and Hyde went on to tramp on her instead of offering a hand to help her off the ground. In addition, he left her screaming. On witnessing what had happened, Enfield went forth to confront the perpetrator.

However, he neither questioned Hyde nor helped the kid. The reason is because the deformed and ugly Hyde gave him a look that made sweat drip off his face. Help came from the young girl’s family after hearing the screams. She was on her way to summon a doctor to tend to an ill family member. The incident takes place early in the novel.

Women at the scene are filled with rage and as a result attack Mr. Hyde. In addition, they threaten to shame him by spreading the word from one end of London to the other. After realizing that the issue could get out of hand, Hyde promises to pay a hundred pounds to calm the angry crowd. He goes into a nearby two-storey-building to fetch the money. He comes out moments later with ten pounds. He is also carrying a draft for the remaining payment.

The document is signed by a different person whom Enfield failed to mention. However, he stresses that it was done by a man who holds a good reputation in the society. As a result, he speculates that Mr. Hyde could have blackmailed the individual who signed it. Enfield goes ahead to examine the building after the incident. He discovers it has no windows, only a door. No one enters or left the dwelling apart from the deformed perpetrator.

Enfield further argues there is something wrong, displeasing, and detestable about the look. He dislikes Hyde for no apparent reason. The actions of Mr. Hyde portray criminality within Jekyll. The portion and medical experiment only acts as a tool to help him accomplish his desires of committing evil deeds.

Another act to show the case is criminal in nature is the murder of Carew. The dreadful act takes place at night near a river. Carew was Utterson’s client and a member of parliament. The murder is witnessed by a house help. She was looking out of an upstairs window at the time. She spots an elderly gentleman in the company of a short and ugly looking man. Within no time, the latter turned on the aged friend and struck him mercilessly with a cane. In addition, he trampled on him, breaking his bones.

The woman hears the cracking sound. She is so shocked that she faints. Immediately after regaining consciousness, she calls the police and informs them about the murder. In addition, the servant identifies the perpetrator as Hyde. While conducting a search on the victim’s body, the police find a golden watch, a purse, and a letter addressed to Mr. Utterson. However, the deceased had no paper or cards to help uncover his identity. As a result, it took Utterson until morning to confirm the victim was Sir Danvers Carew.

Utterson then leads the Police Inspector Newcomen of Scotland to the two-storey building, which was Hyde’s dwelling place. Upon arrival, they met an old woman at the door. She confirms Hyde was not in the building at the time. In spite of her word, the Inspector and Mr. Utterson conduct a search in all the rooms. Drawers are opened and the pockets of all the attires turned inside out.

A checkbook is found lying around. It is in the fireplace. The other half of the strong wooden stick was also found behind a door. Moments later, the lawyer pays Doctor Jekyll a visit. He is escorted to the dissecting rooms where Jekyll was and in a seemingly ill state. Upon questioning, he claims to have cut all ties with Mr. Edward Hyde.

To support the statement, Jekyll presents a letter written to him by Hyde promising he will never cause any trouble again. In addition, it highlights his desires to disappear. However, it does not disclose the perpetrator’s hideout. That was something that the police and other investigators has to work out.

Judging from Sir Carew’s murder and the events that transpired later, it is evident that the case is criminal. Taking another person’s life is inherently criminal, especially if it is not justified. Hyde committed the act without a valid reason. He also did not steal anything from the victim as the golden watch and letter were found intact.

No man can just execute such a crime without intent. Jekyll may have had a problem with Carew, which made him commit the murder. The case is very different to that of the young girl he had bumped on. Dr. Jekyll knew what he was up to even before taking the portion. He only used it to clear his conscience by arguing it was the evil persona’s desire to murder. The concoction is just a cover-up for his evil inner self.

Another point to show the case is criminal is Jekyll’s plan of making Hyde his benefactor. The respected doctor writes the will in spite of his friends’ negative thoughts towards Hyde. Utterson, for example, describes him as something troglodytic in nature. Jekyll’s move shows he found pleasure in Hyde and his monstrous activities. If he indeed disliked the dark personality, he would not have harbored the thoughts of disappearing. Instead, he would have done away with Hyde and maintained his original personality.

The case of Jekyll and Hyde is part medical and part criminal. However, the criminal aspect is portrayed more than the medical element. Jekyll knew he had an evil side deep within him. Conducting the experiments and drinking the portion shows his desire and intent to commit criminal acts. He has to take another form to accomplish his goals and maintain a clear conscience. He did it in a form that was ugly and deformed, just like the dreadful actions.

If the case was entirely medical and Jekyll did not find any pleasure in Hyde, he would have conducted another experiment. He should have tried to invent a portion that would give rise to a better persona. If indeed Jekyll was psychologically affected by the actions committed in Hyde’s form, he would have taken the concoction earlier. As a result, his positive traits would have dominated his dark side. The medical experiments were only meant to justify his criminal actions.

Bibliography

Bricusse, Leslie and Frank Wildhorn, The World of Jekyll & Hyde (Blacksburg: Cherry Lane Music, 2000).

Stevenson, Robert and Jenny Davidson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and other Stories (Pleasantville, N.Y.: Barnes & Noble, 2004).

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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , novella by Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson , published in 1886. The names of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , the two alter egos of the main character, have become shorthand for the exhibition of wildly contradictory behaviour, especially between private and public selves.

The tale—told largely from the perspective of Mr. Gabriel John Utterson, a London lawyer and friend of Dr. Henry Jekyll—begins quietly, with an urbane conversation between Utterson and his friend Mr. Richard Enfield. The latter tells how, returning home in the early hours of the morning, he witnessed a “horrible” incident: a small girl, running across the street, was trampled by a man named Mr. Edward Hyde, who left her screaming on the ground. After being caught, Hyde, who has a face that inspires loathing, agreed to pay the child’s family, and he retrieved from a dilapidated building a check from the account of a respected man. Enfield assumes that Hyde is blackmailing that man, whom Utterson knows to be his client Jekyll.

Utterson has in his files a will in which Jekyll bequeaths everything to Hyde. Troubled, the lawyer visits Dr. Hastie Lanyon, a longtime friend of both Jekyll and Utterson. Lanyon says that he has seen little of Jekyll for more than 10 years, since Jekyll had gotten involved with “unscientific balderdash,” and that he does not know Hyde. Utterson waylays Hyde at the old building and introduces himself and then goes around to Jekyll’s house (the neglected building is a laboratory belonging to the house), only to learn from the butler , Poole, that Jekyll is not at home and that his servants have orders to obey Hyde.

Almost a year later a maid witnesses Hyde beating to death a prominent gentleman who is also a client of Utterson’s. Utterson leads the police to Hyde’s home. Though he is absent, evidence of his guilt is clear. Utterson goes to see if Jekyll is harbouring Hyde, and Jekyll gives Utterson a letter from Hyde, in which Hyde declares that he will be able to escape. However, Utterson’s clerk notices that Jekyll and Hyde appear to have the same handwriting. Jekyll seems healthier and happier over the next few months but later starts refusing visitors. Utterson visits a dying Lanyon, who gives Utterson a document to be opened only after Jekyll’s death or disappearance. Weeks later, Poole requests that Utterson come to Jekyll’s home, as he is fearful that Hyde has murdered Jekyll. When Poole and Utterson break into the laboratory office, they find Hyde’s body on the floor and three documents for Utterson from Jekyll.

Lanyon’s and Jekyll’s documents reveal that Jekyll had secretly developed a potion to allow him to separate the good and evil aspects of his personality. He was thereby able at will to change into his increasingly dominant evil counterpart, Mr. Hyde. While the respectable doctor initially had no difficulty in returning from his rabid personality, he soon found himself slipping into Mr. Hyde without recourse to his drug. He temporarily stopped using his potion, but, when he tried it again, Mr. Hyde committed murder. After that, it took a vast amount of potion to keep him from spontaneously becoming Mr. Hyde. Unable to make any more of the drug because of an unknown but apparently crucial impurity in the original supply, Jekyll soon ran out of the drug. Indeed, he took the last of it to write a confession before becoming Hyde permanently.

The notion of the “double” was widely popular in the 19th century, especially in German literary discussions of the doppelgänger . Fyodor Dostoyevsky ’s The Double (1846) dealt with this very subject, and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley ’s classic Frankenstein tale (1818) can be read in this light. The theme was explored explicitly by Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and by H.G. Wells in both The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) and The Invisible Man (1897). In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , Stevenson suggested that the human propensities for good and evil are not necessarily present in equal measure. Hyde is quite a bit smaller than Jekyll, perhaps indicating that evil is only a small portion of Jekyll’s total personality but one that may express itself in forceful, violent ways. The story has long been interpreted as a representation of the Victorians’ bifurcated self. Jekyll is in every way a gentleman, but just beneath the surface lie baser desires that remain unspoken; he is the very personification of the dichotomy between outward gentility and inward lust. Stevenson’s tale took on new resonance two years after publication with the grisly murders perpetrated by Jack the Ripper in 1888, when the psychological phenomenon that Stevenson explored was invoked to explain a new and specifically urban form of sexual savagery.

An adaptation of the tale for the stage was first performed in 1887, with Richard Mansfield as Jekyll and Hyde, and several popular films highlighted the novella’s horrific aspects, from a 1920 version starring John Barrymore to a 1971 B-movie , Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde , featuring a female alter ego. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), starring Fredric March , and a later adaptation starring Spencer Tracy (1941) were also notable. Stevenson’s story continued to inspire adaptations into the 21st century. It also spurred debate over whether its main character exhibits dissociative identity disorder , a form of psychosis , or some other psychopathology.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , by Robert Louis Stevenson, is a novella published in the 1880s that deals with the duality of human nature. The story is told from the point of view of Mr. Gabriel John Utterson . Utterson is a lawyer and friend of Dr. Jekyll’s. The book opens with Utterson walking and conversing with Mr. Enfield, who is a businessman and distant cousin. Mr. Enfield recounts to Mr. Utterson how he once saw a man named Hyde, who had run over a girl, come out of a door they are passing, with a check signed by Dr. Jekyll. The check was for almost one hundred pounds. Utterson notes that the door in question leads to a laboratory that connects to his friend’s, Jekyll’s, house.

Utterson returns home after his walk with Mr. Enfield and goes straight to his study, where he has a copy of Dr. Jekyll’s will. The will stipulates that should Jekyll disappear or perish, Edward Hyde will inherit his estate. Certain that there is something wrong, that Dr. Jekyll must have been in some way tricked or coerced, Utterson visits his friend to inquire about his beneficiary. Dr. Jekyll not only assures Mr. Utterson that his will is correct and he intends to pass on everything to Hyde, but he also refuses to talk about his connection to Hyde, which vexes Mr. Utterson.

About a year passes, and a maid witnesses a crime while looking out her window. She sees a man attack another, elderly man, killing him with a club. She recognizes the murderer; it is Edward Hyde. His victim was a man named Sir Danvers Carew , a respected gentleman and one of Mr. Utterson’s legal clients. Following the gruesome murder, Utterson goes with the police inspector to look for Hyde, who reportedly lives in Soho, then a seedy area of London. However, they can’t find Edward Hyde. With Hyde missing and suspected of murder, Mr. Utterson worries for Dr. Jekyll’s safety. He goes to his friend and asks again after his connection to Edward Hyde. Once more, Dr. Jekyll will not go into detail, but promises that he won’t have dealings with Hyde anymore. He shows Mr. Utterson a letter from Edward Hyde, promising that he won’t hurt Dr. Jekyll. Mollified, Mr. Utterson lets the matter drop.

For a while, everything seems as it should be. Dr. Jekyll hosts parties and works with charities, and there is no more mention of Edward Hyde. Then, a close friend of Jekyll’s and Utterson’s suddenly falls ill. His name is Dr. Lanyon. Mr. Utterson pays him a visit, but Lanyon flatly refuses to discuss anything related to Dr. Jekyll. Instead, he hands Mr. Utterson a letter with instructions that it not be opened until after he has died. Dr. Lanyon dies a week after he gives Mr. Utterson the letter.

Before Utterson can read the letter, he and Mr. Enfield witness a shocking event. While out on another walk, they come across Dr. Jekyll’s home. He talks with them out his window, but then he transforms, which shocks them both. It’s not until Mr. Utterson goes into Jekyll's laboratory after hearing Hyde’s voice that he confirms the truth: inside, he finds Edward Hyde, dead on the floor and wearing Dr. Jekyll's clothes. He finds a letter on the body from Dr. Jekyll.

Mr. Utterson reads Dr. Lanyon's letter first. Lanyon explains that Dr. Jekyll had been having difficulties with the side effects of a drug he was working on, and that he had asked for Lanyon’s help in procuring some hard-to-come-by ingredients for it. Lanyon describes how Dr. Jekyll transformed into Edward Hyde, and how that transformation shocked him into his sickness and ultimate death. Mr. Utterson, continuing to read Dr. Jekyll’s letter, discovers that the drug he was working on was meant to test whether or not man had a dual nature—good and evil. With the drug, he could separate out his evil side, embodied by Edward Hyde. Unfortunately, the more Dr. Jekyll worked with the drug, the less predictable it was, so that he could no longer control when he turned into Edward Hyde or what Hyde would do when in control. He knew that if Hyde won, he’d cease to be Dr. Jekyll, and all of his goodness would be gone. So, he wrote the letter and took his own life.

Literature during the Victorian era often sought to determine what makes human nature what it is. Madness, one’s own capacity for good versus evil, and playing God often wove their way into written works of the time. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde examines all three of those themes, and was so well-received that the story has become a part of popular culture and the modern vernacular .

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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Robert louis stevenson.

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Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Introduction

Dr. jekyll and mr. hyde: plot summary, dr. jekyll and mr. hyde: detailed summary & analysis, dr. jekyll and mr. hyde: themes, dr. jekyll and mr. hyde: quotes, dr. jekyll and mr. hyde: characters, dr. jekyll and mr. hyde: symbols, dr. jekyll and mr. hyde: literary devices, dr. jekyll and mr. hyde: quizzes, dr. jekyll and mr. hyde: theme wheel, brief biography of robert louis stevenson.

Historical Context of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Other books related to dr. jekyll and mr. hyde.

• Full Title: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• When Written: 1885
• Where Written: Bournemouth, England
• When Published: 5th January 1886
• Literary Period: Victorian
• Genre: Horror, Drama, Victorian Gothic
• Setting: The streets of London
• Climax: Utterson reads the narrative written by Lanyon before his death, which describes the horrific bodily transformation of Mr. Hyde into Dr. Jekyll, explaining everything that has happened so far in an absolutely incredible way.
• Antagonist: Mr. Hyde forms the antagonist of the tale until we realize that he is in fact the double of Dr. Jekyll.
• Point of View: A third person narrator tells the story with an omniscient view of characters but stays mostly with Mr. Utterson, which allows Stevenson to reveal things to the reader with suspense.

Extra Credit for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Strange Beginnings. Robert Louis Stevenson reportedly wrote the draft of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in an astonishing three days in a drug-induced fever.

Expensive Taste. Robert Louis Stevenson was known as “Velvet Jaket” as a young man because of his dandy-fied taste in clothes.

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Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 1886

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Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde opens with a lawyer named Mr Utterson taking his weekly walk with Mr Enfield. Along the way, they pass by a “blistered and distained” (p. 229) door.

Enfield tells Utterson that he had once passed the same door late at night and saw a man “trampl[e] calmly over [a] child’s body” (p. 229). Enfield and other witnesses demanded the man, Edward Hyde, pay a large sum of money to the child’s family. Hyde passed through the door and returned with a cheque drawn on the account of Dr Henry Jekyll, a respected physician. Enfield assumed Hyde had obtained the money by blackmailing Jekyll, and he and Utterson agree to say no more about the affair.

Enfield’s story, though, concerns Utterson. Jekyll is both a friend and a client, and Utterson knows that Hyde is connected in some mysterious way with Jekyll. In fact, in the event of his death or disappearance for more than three months, Jekyll has willed all his possessions to Hyde.

Utterson decides to wait for Hyde to appear. When he sees him, Utterson is instinctively repulsed by what he feels is Hyde’s deep deformity. Soon after, Jekyll assures Utterson he can rid himself of Hyde whenever he pleases.

Almost a year passes without incident. One night, however, a maid sees Hyde bludgeon Sir Danvers Carew to death with a walking stick that Utterson had given as a gift to Jekyll. The attack was so ferocious that the stick broke in two, with one half left in the gutter. Utterson takes the police to Hyde’s rooms, where they find the other half of the walking stick and evidence that Hyde has fled and burned many of his papers.

When Utterson confronts Jekyll, his friend insists no one will ever see Hyde again. He also gives Utterson a letter from Hyde stating as much. However, when Utterson’s clerk, Mr Guest, a handwriting expert, examines the letter, the writing is confirmed as Jekyll’s. Utterson cannot understand why Jekyll would forge for a murderer. But as more time passes and it seems Hyde has truly disappeared, Utterson relaxes and he and their mutual friend Dr Lanyon frequently enjoy Jekyll’s company.

Suddenly, however, Jekyll withdraws to his home and refuses to see anyone. When Utterson visits Lanyon to discuss this change, he sees that Lanyon has received a terrible shock and is near death. Lanyon dies soon after, and Utterson receives an envelope from him marked “not to be opened till the death or disappearance of Dr Henry Jekyll” (p. 259).

As the story builds to a climax, Jekyll’s butler, Poole, hurries to Utterson and begs him to come to Jekyll’s house. He believes Hyde has killed Jekyll. Poole says that Hyde has been locked in Jekyll’s study, ordering Poole to get supplies from chemists all over London. Utterson and Poole rush over, break in, and find Hyde’s twitching body – he had committed suicide when he heard them forcing the door.

Utterson and Poole search but can find no trace of Jekyll. All they have are a sealed letter from Jekyll and a will bequeathing his estate to Utterson.

Utterson first reads Lanyon’s letter. It reveals that Jekyll begged him to come to his house, break open the study, retrieve a drawer and its contents, return home, and wait for Hyde’s arrival. The drawer contained “a phial of some tincture, a paper of some salt, and a record of a series of experiments” (p. 279). Lanyon obeyed and, when Hyde arrived, he mixed the tincture and salt, drank it, and was transformed into Jekyll. Lanyon knew the shock of seeing this event would kill him.

Utterson then turns to Jekyll’s letter. It reveals that Jekyll had long been fascinated by the “thorough and primitive duality of man” (p. 285). He experimented with dividing the self until he discovered a potion that would turn him into evil Mr Hyde. Taking the same solution a second time would restore him to good Dr Jekyll.

At first, Jekyll delighted in the freedom to indulge in sin as Hyde. Soon, though, he felt deep remorse. Hyde, however, became harder and harder to throw off. Eventually, Jekyll accidentally began turning into Hyde, even without the potion. Meanwhile, the supply of the salt needed as a vital ingredient of the transforming potion was almost gone and no more could be found. Jekyll concluded that the original salt must have contained an impurity that brought about his transformation. Having taking the final draught, Jekyll wrote as Jekyll for the last time, expressing his hope that Hyde would have “the courage to release himself at the last moment” (p. 32).

Quotations from Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde , The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Swanston edn, vol v (London: Chatto and Windus, 1911).

Image courtesy of Rare Books and Special Collections, Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina

Note on pronunciation: Stevenson pointed out that the surname of the protagonist should be pronounced ‘Jeekill’.

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The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson Reading Comprehension

Subject: English

Age range: 14-16

Resource type: Worksheet/Activity

Last updated

5 August 2024

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Suitable for cover lesson or homework task, this comprehensive reading comprehension resource focuses on the classic novel The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Designed to enhance key skills such as word meaning, inference, summary writing, analysis, evaluation, content understanding, structural analysis, retrieval of information, prediction, explanation, exploration, comparison, and synthesis.

This resource offers a structured approach to engage students with the text while honing their critical thinking abilities. With a variety of exercises catering to different levels of comprehension, students will delve into the intricate layers of the narrative, encouraging deep analysis and interpretation. From deciphering the meaning of words in context to drawing nuanced inferences from the text, this resource provides a holistic learning experience.

By exploring themes, character motivations, and narrative techniques, students will develop a thorough understanding of the novel’s content, structure, and quality. Through activities that prompt comparison between characters or events and synthesis of ideas, students will not only strengthen their comprehension skills but also refine their ability to articulate complex ideas effectively.

Download this resource today to provide your students with a stimulating and enriching learning experience centred around one of literature’s most intriguing works.

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The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson Resource Bundle

Are you looking for comprehensive and engaging resources to enhance your teaching of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde? Look no further! Our resource bundle offers a wide range of materials to support the exploration of this classic novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. Key Features of the Resource Bundle: Character Studies: Dive deep into the characters of Hyde, Mr Utterson, Dr Lanyon, Mr Poole, Mr Guest, Sir Danvers Carew, Dr Jekyll, and Mr Enfield with detailed analysis and character profiles. Assessments: Test your students' understanding with a multiple-choice assessment and reading comprehension exercises designed to evaluate their comprehension of the text. Chapter Analysis: Delve into a detailed analysis of Chapter One to help students uncover the themes, motifs, and narrative techniques employed by the author. Additional Resources Included: Writing the Gothic Notes: Explore the elements of gothic literature and guide students in writing captivating and atmospheric gothic narratives. Gothic Tropes Worksheet: Challenge students to identify and analyse common gothic tropes present in the novel. Introduction to Gothic Literature Lesson Presentation: Engage students with a visually appealing presentation introducing the key concepts and themes of gothic literature. Literary Devices in Fiction: Help students understand the purpose and effect of literary devices. Flashcards and Revision Notes: Reinforce learning with flashcards and revision notes on literary devices and language features to aid students in their revision and exam preparation. All resources are available as PDF downloads, ensuring easy access and compatibility across different devices. Please note that the resources are not editable to maintain their high quality and consistency. Whether you are teaching the novel for the first time or looking to refresh your existing resources, our comprehensive bundle is designed to support and inspire both teachers and students. Don't miss out on this invaluable resource bundle to enrich your teaching of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde! Purchase now and take your lessons to the next level.

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